New Walmart training center to open in Topeka
Facility at 37th and Topeka will add 14 jobs
A new, 3,000-square-foot Walmart training academy will be located next to a Topeka store to facilitate hands-on, consistent training for employees at 25 to 30 nearby stores.
In paperwork filed in June with the City of Topeka planning department, Walmart indicated it would build the center near the east end of the store at 1301 S.W. 37th St. Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg said the new Topeka facility is part of a nationwide plan.
“We’re going to have 200 of these located in stores all across the country,” he said. “They’re a dedicated facility where our front-line hourly supervisors will go. They’ll receive two weeks of hands-on training in both retail fundamentals and specifics of how to run their individual departments.”
Walmart elected to build 200 training academies nationwide to make it easier for employees to receive training near their homes. The Topeka facility will add about 14 positions for trainers to the store, Lundberg said. Those employees will be experienced Walmart staff.
The two-week training will include classroom time — much of which will be done online through iPads — in the new building. Hands-on training will occur in the store for a “real-life environment.”
“It will help those department managers understand their business, know how to serve their customers, make sure that they’re delivering in their department for folks,” Lundberg said, adding that the new academies will offer a consistent training process.
Previously, training for department managers, of which there are up to 30 in each store, was done on the job, shadowing others as they worked, he said. But that can be less than ideal when situations occur in the store that interrupt training.
Lundberg said the 37th Street and Topeka Boulevard store had to be certified as an academy store, meaning it has a strong track record of developing and training people who can serve as examples during the training process.
The training academy is expected to be up and running in the first half of 2017, he said.